One of my continual frustrations as a theater rat with a scrabbly foot in the design world is the unforgivable lack of pretty in most show flyers. They'll pay the lighting designer, they'll pay the costume designer, they'll sure as shit pay the director, they'll get everything on stage looking Sunday-go-to-meetin' purty, and then crap all over themselves with an ill-conceived, poorly designed flyer.
It's like my crazy Polish art teacher whined about back in silkscreen class: the packaging on materials being sold to artists is among the dullest and horsiest design there is. Ah, sweet irony. (Of course, I say this knowing full well that our website is among the ugliest in town, but I'm not web-proficient enough to do anything about that end of the design thing. So there.) [UPDATE 10/9/07: our beautiful new site, designed by me and developed by Jen Rocha, is available for viewing here.]
Anyway, out of the (no lie) 25+ (!!!) flyers on Evidence Room's box office entry table, above left are the few I found that I wish I'd done myself. Designers, feel free to step forward and introduce yourselves:
- REDCAT's tasty season brochure. Yum, yum. Of course, they've got funding out the wazoo and ties to one of the West coast's greatest art communities. They'd be stoned for anything less than stellar design.
- Jon Rivera's Dogeaters flyer. Great use of oversize medium, color and imagery. Love the crazy low-end Photoshop work on Imelda's eyes, too.
- For juicy, juicy printing alone, the flyer for Phacts of Life (show running at The L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center's Renberg Theater). Chris Rooney did the design; may have to email him for his printer's digits. The show looks kinda cute, too, and features the always-hilarious Sam Pancake and a stellar roster of guest stars: Mink Stole, Kate Flannery and Mike Hitchcock.
- Finally, I just plain liked the image on the flyer advertising Todd Noel's work. Not as nuts about the rest of the stuff on his site (and not crazy about the font the Toddster chose for the flyer, either), but it got me to type in a URL and click, which is more than most of those flyer jockeys do.
xxx c